Cooked Food Is Poison... REALLY?

If you are into the "raw vegan world" you might have heard or read that claim.

What do those people base their claims on, though?

Well, they mostly base it on their beliefs, and that has nothing to do with science.

Is a baked potato really poison to us? What about steamed rice? And boiled broccoli? You may be laughing, but some people are really militant about this subject, and they totally believe what they're saying.

They basically claim that cooked food is poison because foods like grains contain phytic acid (which is NOTHING like a poison, some scientific studies even say it may be an anti-carcinogen), opioid peptides (but wait, even spinach contain those substances!), oxalates (again, many fruits and vegetables contain also oxalates) or solanine (which could only be a problem if you ate GREEN potatoes, who does that?) to name a few.

They also argue that when you cook food you're essentially eating "dead food", that is devoid of nutritional value.
Yes, when we cook food we lose some nutrients (especially vitamins, since minerals are more heat stable than the former ones), but we don't lose them COMPLETELY. There may be a ~10%-~50+% loss, depending on the method used for cooking. We could still get, potentially, all our vitamins and minerals by eating only a good variety of cooked foods (although I don't recommend doing that!).

Finally, many people who ate only raw foods for a certain period of time and then went back to eating cooked food, say that they experienced heavy symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, dizziness, bloating and even vomiting. But does this prove that cooked food is the culprit? NO, it doesn't.

I've been there, done that, and yes, I got bad symptoms from eating BOILED POTATOES after eating only raw fruits and vegetables for weeks on end.

This is actually due to a simple explanation. When you eat only raw fruits and vegetables, your digestive system gets used to dealing only with those foods, that are actually very easy to digest. Thus, your digestive system gets WEAK, and when you decide to eat grains or even tubers, like potatoes, you experience some degree of discomfort.
Keep eating those same cooked starches that "made you sick" for a couple of days or weeks, and your digestive tract will get strong again and more efficient at digesting them.

I must emphasize that THERE IS NO SCIENCE behind the "cooked food is poison" claim.
Even ALL the HIGH CARB VEGAN doctors promoting that kind of diet agree that eating both raw and cooked foods is best for health and that there is no advantage in eating a fully raw food diet.